Press Release: Eliq Raises $.5M Round from CBC Investment Group

The Swedish energy management startup Eliq has secured new funding to expand its distribution channels to include electricity utility companies, reaching millions of homes with its real-time energy monitoring and optimization app, linked to its proprietary smart meter sensor integrated with third party Smart Home systems.

Eliq AB, the pioneer in intelligent energy monitoring and optimization solutions for the smart homeowner, today announced it has raised $.5M in a seed funding round from the Swedish CBC Investment Group.

The funds will be used chiefly to increase Eliq’s sales and marketing efforts towards electricity utility companies in Europe who are looking for ways to engage more intimately with their customers by offering home owners better control of their energy consumption. Eliq will also continue to empower third party Smart Home systems with its energy optimization technology, with LifeSmart Inc. being the first smart home company embedding Eliq.

“There is increasing awareness amongst home owners of the opportunity to stop wasting electricity by simply visualizing energy consumption in real-time on their smart phone, comparing usage with similar households, alerting energy-leakages and giving practical advice on how to reduce their monthly electricity bill substantially”, says co-founder and CEO Håkan Ludvigson. “At the same time, we are seeing a lot of interest from the electricity companies themselves to offer smart energy home systems directly to their customers as an over-the-top (OTT) service. The energy utilities’ motivation is to develop a new level of trust and relationship in a competitive market where electricity companies today compete on price only. Churn is a major problem in deregulated markets where there is almost no loyalty to any one electricity provider”.

Today Eliq enables electricity companies a complete plug-and-play Smart Energy Home integrated with LifeSmart’s sensors, smart-plugs, cameras and a variety of devices for their customers to add security, comfort, climate control and energy management. “Electricity utilities can now finally evolve from simple energy providers to become truly customer centric value-creators and at the same time generate a new source of SaaS revenues” continues Håkan Ludvigson.

Eliq today has a customer satisfaction level of 96%, with the main reason being immediate cost savings for home owners of up to 25% simply by creating real-time awareness and alerts of what, when and where energy is being wasted in the home.

“We plan to roll out a large number of Eliq empowered Smart Home systems in the next 12 months” –Christina Kringsjå, VP Sales, Eidsiva Energi

Christina Kringsjå, VP Sales of Eliq’s distribution partner Eisdiva Energi in Norway says: “Our customers expect us to move with the times and help them become smarter about how they use energy and control their electricity bill. Gone are the days when we just send an invoice at the end of the month and hope to keep customers in a deregulated and highly competitive market. We see the customer benefit from Eliq integrated with the LifeSmart system, both in their main residence during all seasons. In Norway we are also having many customers with 2nd homes where they run the risk of racking up expensive electricity bills if they can’t monitor and control heating remotely to avoid freezing pipes. We plan to roll out a large number of Eliq empowered Smart Home systems in the next 12 months and we are already seeing a big interest from our customers to smarten-up their homes.”

Karl Xavier of CBC Investment Group says: “We were impressed by Eliq’s team and their proven easy-to-use solution that installs in minutes and immediately provides value to the home owner. We believe that Eliq is well positioned in the fast growing Internet of Things (IoT) market and specifically the connected smart home industry with its core competence in energy sustainability. We also believe that the electricity utility industry is a natural channel partner for Eliq to drive the adoption of the smart energy home. Utilities across the world are quickly converting from analog to digital smart meters and have a big opportunity to not just empower their customers with more granular energy intelligence, but also use the big-data analysis provided by Eliq to balance demand with response. We are excited to be part of Eliq’s continued growth as the leading intelligent technology company in this globally expanding market”.

Eliq was recently honored on Deloitte’s Fast50 Awards[1], as one of Sweden’s fastest growing tech companies. The company’s growth has continued to accelerate since its inception in 2010 when it launched its first stand-alone energy display, until today where it offers a fully integrated Smart Energy Home with machine-learning analytics. The global smart home market, is forecasted to grow to 91 million homes by 2020[2] and at the same time the smart meters are expected to reach 85% of the European and US markets. Given these figures, Eliq expects to scale its business exponentially over the coming years.

With this new funding, Eliq has raised a total of $2.8M to date, and is now poised to grow its capability to execute further growth and begin a Series A-funding round during the course of 2017.